The inside leg

The inside leg

Saturday 22 January 2005 06.23 EST
First published on Saturday 22 January 2005 06.23 EST

Save the last dance Horse Meat Disco, in Vauxhall, south London.

I was going to write about a gay club in Hoxton, but that turned out to be ruled by ennui: that feeling of vast expectancy organisers and paying public know will never be met. In Vauxhall there is none of that rubbish. Windows are blacked out, people dance, that's that.

Obviously, the main message is polo shirts. You want to time-warp back a year or two to check they weren't always this popular. Some are recognisable: there's that bleached-out rainbow stripe from Topman, and a Penguin over there. But they are worn as a standard, far more than T- or short-sleeved shirts. Encouragingly, the surfeit still doesn't make them look tired.

Strong, too, are three unacquainted men wearing shirts with an oversize plaid. Lumberjack is a cliché, but the trio avoid this with the exaggerated width of the check. One wears it regular and tucked into jeans, another cowboy-style with the curved-edge yoke, the third with rolled-up sleeves. I'm jealous of all three, but particularly of the cowboy style, which appears dull under disco lights, but is revealed to be in shades of blue and yellow under closing-time beams.

There is also a braces triumph. These are no cheap grippy things. Mid-Sylvester record, I question him: he bought the trousers at Dockers, and then sourced the braces "from one of those shops in the City". He can't be more specific. The braces are made of felt rather than elastic, and look splendid in black against a red T-shirt. Whatever, a lesson learned: dancing, rather than posing, is the best motivation for style. Too much thought can kill fashion dead.